I have been involved in some conversations around "Going Virtual" and I'll tell you, clinging to the hope that virtual conferences will port easily and cleanly is... beyond optimistic and probably unhelpful. https://twitter.com/PlanetDr/status/1265654055092867075

There are a lot of discussions tied to this about problematic structures in academia. Not least of all is the idea that the only way to make progress in fields is to give dozens of talks a year around the world.

Virtual meetings don't port well for a million reasons - Zoom is exhausting, when you scale up to conference size the technology is murderous, time zones, conflicting obligations (Thanks, Pandemic).

Can we do good interesting things virtually? Yes, and lots of folks are trying things out.

Is the pandemic exposing structural flaws in how our fields and academia has a whole functions? Yeah, but I'm going to guess zero of them are a surprise.

This pandemic is going to be a career hit for many of us - it will, in general, be worse if you are "early career" because your time scales are shorter. Or, if you are on short term contracts. Anything that involves evaluation not averaged over a pretty significant chunk.

It *does* suck. People are doing clever things to indicate missed talks or other opportunities on their CVs. Maybe everything in this window should just be in red ink to indicate THE DARK TIME.

I also think we should recognize THE DARK TIME isn't even close to ending.

Anyway, the landscape changes drastically, and I'm here to work on better ways... I'm actually delighted to not be jumping on 87 planes. There are some things I'll need to do in person in the coming year. But I want to see an academia that is serious about a carbon diet.

Anyway - It is scary, and terrible, and anyone within spitting distance of any job market is going to be feeling that worse than most... But a parade of virtual meetings isn't going to solve that.

It isn't even clear what systems and institutions survive this.

So yeah - professional orgs and other places that have $$$ invested in the conference industrial complex are going to do everything they can to keep that moving. Just realize that's where they are coming from.